Who's on Worst? by Filip Bondy

Author:Filip Bondy [Bondy, Filip]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-0-385-53613-4
Published: 2013-03-25T16:00:00+00:00

Ralph Branca delivers his fastball to Bobby Thomson in 1951, and the Giants win the pennant, win the pennant, win the pennant … AP Photo

Branca later became aware that the Giants were stealing his catcher’s signs by using a telescope from the center field stands. The story was broken by The Wall Street Journal in 2001 and included a confession by Sal Yvars, the Giants’ catcher. Yvars confirmed the story to Branca. “He said, ‘I gave him the pitch,’ ” Branca said. Thomson denied getting tipped off about the fastball on the actual home run pitch while admitting to receiving tips on some of Branca’s other pitches. Branca never confronted his friend Thomson on the matter. “I think he didn’t want to demean what he did,” Branca said after Thomson’s death. “But in my mind, I think he would have been a bigger man if he admitted it.”

In any case, the revelations did little or nothing to change the conventional narrative. Thomson was the hero, Branca the goat. “People don’t want to change history,” Branca told the Los Angeles Times. “Thomson’s a good guy, was humble, never lorded it over me, had decent values, good family man, good provider, good husband. I know what it was, I know how I pitched. Even though I get blamed for it, I’m not the guy who lost the pennant.”

It is easy to say Branca’s career was never the same. It wasn’t. But his back injury during the next spring training was really the culprit. He struggled for two seasons in Brooklyn, then was picked off waivers by the Tigers in 1953, later signing as a free agent with the Yankees in 1954. After a year in the Giants’ minor-league system, Branca was given his last shot back with the Dodgers in 1956. He appeared in one final game on September 7, striking out two batters and allowing no runs in two innings of impressive mop-up duty during a 6–2 loss to—whom else?—the New York Giants.

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